Writing Habits of Brilliant Writers – Veronica Hunt | Guest Post

You are wrong if you think that brilliant writers have never faced writer’s block and fear of the blank page. These people had a daily battle to motivate themselves and there is no such writing newbie who hasn’t ever experienced such a strong need to finish a passage or a chapter. And maybe this is one of those factors that made brilliant writers icons of literature.

If you will think about the writers you adore, you will admit that you love them because of their deep thoughts and thrilling stories. It is easy to figure out that all of them were inventing some special habits to create the working environment that suits them, while some of them had really strange writing rituals.

Aside from amazing writing talent and intelligence, the best minds of the world possessed a real passion to their creative activity. However, in addition to that, most brilliant writers adopted habits to put the words on paper. Many of them had secrets to deal with the struggle of a writing routine.

We have gathered some of them to help you simplify your own writing process.

Making yourself comfortable

Do you know that some authors could focus on writing only when they were lying in bed or on a sofa? For instance, Truman Capote is known as a “horizontal writer” because he preferred composing his texts only when he was comfortably lying in bed. On the contrary, there were writers who could focus on writing only when standing. For instance, Charles Dickens, Hemingway, and Lewis Carroll. Some of the great thinkers were inspired to create their best pieces lying while some of them preferred standing at the desk – each of these habits have certain benefits.

Learning and writing in various languages

There were fantastic authors who made amazing contributions to world literature without any translators, since they were able to write in different languages. Vladimir Nabokov, Sholem Aleichem, and Samuel Beckett are the most famous multilingual writers of all times. In fact, learning languages creates a better understanding of the language structure as a whole and makes a writer more familiar with its processes. It is really crucial for a writer to understand how the meaning of the text depends on the word choice and what words are present in native language and are absent in some foreign ones. Discovering the way the same text could sound in various languages without ruining the meaning is a great achievement. If you think that this writing habit is for you, try Duolingo.comto learn languages online for free and practice your knowledge.

Using index cards

Some writers were very specific about their writing instruments. Vladimir Nabokov used index cards to compose his texts, and kept those cards in small boxes. This habit helped him see all the entire scenes at the same time and re-order them if needed to see what happens with the text. Nabokov also kept some cards under his pillow to write down any idea quickly if it appeared in his head at night. Practicing creative and academic writing, you can use online index cards at Supernotecard.comfor plotting and note-taking. It is a great way to write a story or an essay, since it might bring you some unexpected and fresh ideas.

Looking for inspiration in different areas of knowledge

Well, this might sound too banal, but hey, it really works. Make yourself read texts all the time. Make sure that you don’t let yourself focus on a single discipline, but that you are reading different ones. For instance, use the website StudentShare.netto get access to different texts at the same place. There you will find different kinds of essays and works in a number of disciplines. A pretty powerful tool for diversifying yourself! The most famous polymaths in literature were Mary Somerville, Lewis Carroll, Omar Khayyam, and Mikhail Lomonosov.

Creating monotonous environment

A perfect place for creating a writing piece is a place without any distractions. It is much easier to focus when you are in the half-meditative condition and nothing puts you off. For example, writer Francine Prose invented her own way to struggle with distractions – she used to move her writing desk in front of the window so she could look out. Well, actually, she claims that a landscape she is looking at is like a brick wall. Sounds strange, but Prose believes that facing a high wall is an amazing metaphor of being a writer, which inspires her and reminds her about the most important things in her work. She finds this monotonous view helpful when she needs to spend long stretches of time writing.